Ha! here is a fine thing! It is the Granulate Brittle-star,[114] a
species said to be widely spread, but I never saw it before. It is
confined to deep water. It is a very fine imposing species, reminding
me (a strange comparison, you will say!) of the great South American
hairy Spiders, with a brown body and long bristly legs sprawling over
a width of eight or ten inches. Its hues are said to be various, but I
will describe this as I see it.
The disk is a plump cushion slightly depressed in the centre, of a
light reddish umber, or sand-brown. The base of each ray is rich
red-brown, the colour encroaching on the disk with two points, and
running down the medial line of the ray. This hue is bordered by
velvety black, blending with it; and beyond the middle of the ray, the
deepening brown is pretty well lost in the black. The ray is edged with
spines standing out at right angles, and set in rows. These spines are
black with grey points, and greatly augment the noble aspect of the
creature. Each ray is about four and a half inches long, running off to
a fine point.
The animal resents being turned over, and refuses to lie in a supine
position, unlike the “malus pastor” of the poet. It curls and twists
the slender ray-tips, crawls rapidly, and courses round and round the
edge of the pan into which we have dropped it.
Let me anticipate here to narrate the after history of my captive.
Consigned to a shallow tank at home, after a few days I missed him one
morning, and on searching the whole room carefully, found him at length
under the edge of the hearth-rug, some yards from the tank, with all
his rays broken into many pieces, and only the short stumps remaining.
Though dry and apparently dead, I perceived a slight movement in the
stumps, which gave me hope of revival, and I replaced the poor maimed
thing, sadly shorn of his glory, in the tank. He did revive; and the
truncated ends of the ray-stumps enabled me to see the arrangement
of the spines. These form about nine rows on each side, radiating
fan-like; within the undermost row on each side is a row of flexible
bladdery tubes much like the suckers, and like them protruding from
orifices in the calcareous skeleton, but not retractile. They are
studded with tiny warts, and terminate not in a sucking disk, but
in a sort of bifid extremity. They are not used for locomotion, nor
are they ordinarily applied to the ground as if tactile, and yet are
continually thrown round so that the tip is brought up to the base,
and this suddenly and abruptly, and every few seconds, as if something
were captured and conveyed to the mouth; but this cannot be, for the
mouth is not there, and nothing is seen to be seized. Perhaps some
intelligence, in a way unimaginable by us, is thus obtained, of
outward things.
The poor maimed creature managed to stump awkwardly about for a
few days, but soon died, with no perceptible attempt to renew the
self-amputated members.
The Brittle-stars appear to move by means of the flexibility of their
long snake-like rays, the spines with which they are furnished enabling
these organs to obtain a hold on the surface along which they crawl;
and that so secure that even perpendicular and very smooth surfaces
present no hindrance to their progression. They have no proper suckers;
and the rays are not constituent portions of the body, containing
part of the stomach and intestine as in the true Star-fishes, but
imperforate appendages to it.